


Everyone knows at least one secret language

by neonetc



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: 10 years later, Angst, F/M, Reunions, natasha teaches third graders, retired spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 01:06:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/628564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonetc/pseuds/neonetc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been ten years since she left and she's been teaching at this school for eight, but it's only been five years since the paranoia wore off, since she stopped triple-checking the lock on her front door every night, ears perked every time a car drove down the road.  And now Clint Barton is two hundred feet away, standing in the California sunlight, waiting for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everyone knows at least one secret language

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Raul Gutierrez's poem "Lies I've Told My 3 Year Old Recently"

She's always prided herself on being able to wiggle her way out of any situation, with her gun or her fists or her words, but when she spots Clint Barton getting out of his car through the windows that line the wall of her classroom, she knows there isn't going to be an easy way out of this one.

She forces herself to look away from the window and manages to keep her hands from shaking as she turns back to the whiteboard, marker in hand. It's been ten years since she left and she's ben teaching at this school for eight, but it's only been five years since the paranoia wore off, since she stopped triple-checking the lock on her front door every night, ears perked every time a car drove down the road. And now Clint Barton is two hundred feet away, standing in the California sunlight, waiting for her.

But she doesn't focus on that now. Instead, she gives her attention to the twenty third graders sitting in front of her, only to find that they're not giving her much n return. She doesn't need to look at the clock to know that the bell signaling the end of the school day is approaching. Barton always did have great timing.

"Don't forget to read with your parents tonight," she tells the kids as they rush out the door toward buses and parents' waiting arms, shouting, "bye, Ms. Moore!" behind them as they go.

And then she spends a wile gathering her things, delaying the journey to her car, where she can see through the window that he's waiting. It's not exactly surprising that he found her; something in her has always known that he would eventually. Their connection has always been strong, but she thought she'd evaded it. Ten years ago, she got a new identity, dyed her signature red locks, and disappeared the only way she knew how--without help from anyone. 

But here he is anyway, leaning against her car in dark jeans and a black t-shirt and sunglasses, the kind the movie stars wear, looking much better than she'd ever imagined. He watches her approach; she can feel his eyes on her despite the dark lenses he wears to hide them.

"How'd you find me?" she asks when she reaches him, popping open the trunk of her car and loading her plastic crate full of homework to be graded inside. He's still watching her, silent.

"Never pictured you as a teacher."

She stares back at him. There are new wrinkles around his mouth, probably his eyes too, if she could see them, but he's the same Clint. The same Clint who made her stronger, who risked everything for her time and time again. The same Clint she walked away from because it all became too much, weighing down on her like all the water in all the oceans in the world. She hadn't even told Fury she was leaving.

"I'm not coming back, Clint," she says, moving past him without touching him to get to the driver's side door.

"I wasn't going to ask you to."

It would be so easy, she knows, to open the door and slip into her car and leave him behind in the rearview mirror, but she can't. Maybe it's the appeal of the potential closure this conversation could bring. Or maybe it's something else, something she doesn't want to think about.

"Then why are you here?" she says.

"I miss you, Tasha," he says, so softly she thinks she might have imagined it, but then she turns and looks at him anyway. He's finally taken those sunglasses off, and there are wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but he's Clint, he's Clint, and her hands are suddenly shaking so much that she drops her keys.

He picks them up, but makes no move to return them to her.

"Can we talk? Please?"

She somehow manages to nod her consent and communicate to him that he can follow her home, and then her keys are in her hand and she's in her car, holding it together only long enough to hear his car door slam. Then she's breathing too hard, shoulders heaving, stomach quaking. She gulps down some water from the bottle in the cup holder and takes a deep breath. 

During the ten minute drive to her house, it occurs to her that maybe she shouldn't let Clint see where she lives, except she knows he's probably found it anyway, and besides, she's Clint. She's never been able to tell him no.

He parks on the street in front of her house and follows her up the walk. Neither speaks until she opens the door and her Jack Russell bounds forward, flinging herself immediately at Clint.

"What's his name?" Clint asks, smiling as he bends down to let the dog sniff him.

"Lucy," Natasha says, shutting the door behind them.

Ten minutes later, they're sitting at the kitchen table with mugs of tea. Natasha leaves hers on the table, afraid that if she picks it up her shaking hands will give her away, spilling the contents of the mug all over.

"I looked for you, you know," Clint says, speaking first. "Right after you left, once they realized you weren't coming back."

"Once _they_ realized?"

"Oh, I always knew. If you were coming back, you would've said goodbye."

He looks up and catches her eye and smiles, and something in her that she can't control makes her smile back. He's always done that to her, made her weak, made her lose control of herself, even as he was making her stronger. That's why she had to leave.

"Maybe," she says, but nothing more.

He picks up his tea but puts it back down without taking a sip. "I left too," he says. "A few years ago."

"Oh yeah? Where'd you go?"

She thinks he won't answer. He shouldn't answer. Once a spy, always a spy. 

But he does.

"Boston. Worked on cars. Thought about you."

She flinches despite herself. "Clint, you can't--"

"Say stuff like that?" He cuts her off, guesses what she's going to say next, just like he's always been able to. "Why the hell not?" 

She doesn't answer him. Instead she pushes her chair back from the table and crosses to the kitchen sink. The window above it looks into the backyard, where the lawn is littered with dog poop she needs to pick up before the clouds on the edge of the sky roll in. But she barely registers that as she stares outside just to look at something that isn't Clint. 

"Natasha," he says, and his voice is close, right in her ear. He's not touching her, not yet, but she can feel the heat of his body right behind hers. She's never been able to hear him coming. Maybe that's part of why they worked so well together. 

"I left, Clint," she says, leaning farther into the counter, away from him. "It was too hard."

She can feel him sigh, the warm air hitting her cheek, and she shivers. 

"We're not spies anymore, Tash."

"Once a spy, always a spy," she says. She says these words to herself everyday, every time she finds herself feeling for a gun that isn't there, every time she rubs lotion into the scars that cover her body like constellations. 

Her resolve is slipping, though, even more so as his hand moves along the edge of the sink to rest upon hers. His fingers, the warmth of his palm, his breath in her ear--it all feels too familiar. Her heart is pounding in her ears. _This is too hard_ , she thinks. 

"I can't," she says breathlessly as she pulls her hand out of his and pushes away from him, back toward the kitchen table where their now cold mugs of tea sit. But he grabs her wrist, stopping her, pulling her back to him. 

He's not grasping her tightly and she knows she could get away, probably easily, because he'd never hurt her, not like this. But she doesn't want to, really fucking doesn't want to, and in this moment, with Clint's arms pressed against her back and his eyes looking down at her like he can't look away, she doesn't know why she should. So she gives in, wrapping her arms around him and sinking her head down against his chest. They've never embraced like this, not when they weren't battle worn or scared to death or drunk. But he feels warm and safe and familiar, and she doesn't want to let go.

"What are you so scared of?" he whispers as he weaves a hand through her hair, which is now dark and curly, but he doesn't seem bothered by it. 

She takes a breath, and when she speaks, her voice is ragged. "We can never be normal," she says. "Not completely." She's managed well enough over the last ten years, but she has trouble with people, with trusting them, with letting them in. That's why she likes her third graders so much. They almost always tell the truth. And _that's_ why that at some point over the last few years, she's started to feel guilty about living this lie. 

"When have you ever wanted to be normal?" He pulls back to look at her, quirks his eyebrows just like he used to, and she laughs. No one has ever been able to make her laugh like he does. 

Before her smile fades, he kisses her, and her arms tighten around his neck like no time has passed. Through the fog of lips and tongues and his hands in her hair and against her back she thinks that this is exactly the thing that she shouldn't be doing, because it's only going to get her right back into the mess that she ran away from a decade ago. But that thought is just a whisper on the edge of her consciousness, and she squeezes her eyes shut tighter to silence it. 

When they break apart, he rests his forehead against hers and captures her eyes with his, trapping her, keeping her from looking away.

"Please don't leave me again," he says, and there's pain in his voice, the pain of ten years ago and all the time since. It's familiar to her because she's felt it herself, but love is for children and so she's kept it buried. 

"I'm sorry, Clint, I'm so sorry," she says now, and her pain is his pain, and why did she ever try to pretend that it wasn't? She buries her head in his chest and his t-shirt absorbs her tears, and he rubs circles on her back and shushes her, like he did once before after a target in Montreal left her more shaken up than she ever lets herself get. 

"Don't let me go," she whispers, and his arms tighten around her as if to say, don't you worry about that.


End file.
